Research Questions & Hypotheses

Research questions

The research question depends (in terms of its nature) on the type of analysis we intend to carry out (See fig 3.9 in Francom 2024):

Table 1: Overview of analysis types

Type	Aims	Approach	Methods	Evaluation
Exploratory	Explore: gain insight	Inductive, data-driven, and iterative	Descriptive, pattern detection with machine learning (unsupervised)	Associative
Predictive	Predict: validate associations	Semi-deductive, data-/ theory-driven, and iterative	Predictive modeling with machine learning (supervised)	Model performance, feature importance, and associative
Inferential	Explain: test hypotheses	Deductive, theory-driven, and non-iterative	Hypothesis testing with statistical tests	Causal

Research question’s area # 1 “EXLORATION”

1. Is there a pattern in the WBG project document corpus¹ that shows non random variation in the incidence of certain policy concepts² over time?

2. Could the WDR ³ “explain” or at least have a correlation to the appearance-prevalence of said concepts?

For the moment, the present study’s research aim (See Table 1) is mainly TO EXPLORE (trends over time in concepts use), and possibly to PREDICT (conjecture about WRD traction effect).

Hypotheses

RQ #1.1

The launch of a “policy slogan” carries intrinsic motivations to shift the PDO in a certain direction.

• H1: if WDR mentions a certain concept, I expect it will appear more frequently in the PDO of the subsequne few FY.

---

Possible (interesting) follow-up

Research question’s area # 2 “WHY”

The important question is “WHY” does such a deviation from the original meaning of a word/sentence occur?. Granted, languages evolve on their own, but it can also be subject to manipulation, as George Orwell’s “1984” so powerfully depicted illustrating the rules and purpose of fictional Oceania nation’s newspeak. The risks connected to this potential abuse of language are clearly laid out by Riccardo Garbini in his “Lessico - Uscire da Babele” (Garbini 2003, 4) ⁴

In some cases the deviation of the meaning is evidenced by the pure and simple suppression of the term (1984): in such cases, therefore, the analysis does not insist on the reductionist aspect. The deviations, where present, are dictated above all by ideological intentions, that is, by the superimposition of an interpretative grid with rather rigid meshes on the objective data of reality. The effect of the superimposition of this interpretative grid called ideology thus results in a reduction of the perceptive and interpretative field of reality. For this reason semantic deviations have been called ‘reductionisms’.

Research question’s area # 3 “HOW”

Assuming that we may, at least, form hypotheses on why this “reduction” occurs, “HOW does the the deviation from reality (in the language common use) sparkle and then spread?” Can we detect the mechanisms?

Research question’s area # 4 “WHAT CONSEQUENCES”

Besides investigating the origin, it would be equally important to understand the consequences of a lamented lessical approximation or reduction.

References

Fioravanti, Giuseppe. 2006. Pedagogia dello studio: considerazioni e spunti per una pedagogia del desiderio. L’Aquila: Japadre.

Francom, Jerid. 2024. An Introduction to Quantitative Text Analysis for Linguistics: Reproducible Research Using R. 1st ed. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003393764.

Garbini, Riccardo. 2003. Uscire da Babele - lessico per una pedagogia dello studio. Japadre Editore. L’Aquila.

Footnotes

1. WBG project document observed in this case are Project Development Objectives (PDO) descriptive short texts.

2. concepts means ….

3. WDRs are the flagship reports of the World Bank group…

4. Annex to the Giuseppe Fioravanti’s book (Fioravanti 2006)